


Foggy Mornings

by Ezlebe



Series: The Autumn Eve [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Romance, Established Relationship, Gen, General Dysfunction, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 15:06:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9129472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ezlebe/pseuds/Ezlebe
Summary: “Why haven’t you told her to pick it up with me tomorrow?” Hux asks, leaning back in his seat and looking out toward the hall. He knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mitaka saw him walk in here with Ren, which has hardly the most subtle of implications.“She is um, adamant,” Mitaka says, with an evident note of suffering. “Very adamant.”





	

The tension strumming through the office is gently rising to palpable levels, and Hux finds himself drawn to the soft glow of the city streaming in from the exterior wall. It’s just the right intensity, particularly for how it –

A dull buzz pierces the idle thoughts with little gentleness, redirecting all collective attention to the blinking phone on the desk, then repeating itself three seconds later; Hux waits until a third and fourth have passed before he reaches out and slaps the comm button. “ _What_ , Mitaka?”

Mitaka is silent for a moment before his voice to echoes throughout the room. “Petra Dianovna would very much like to speak to you. Sir.”

“Why haven’t you told her to pick it up with me tomorrow?” Hux asks, leaning back in his seat and looking out toward the hall. He knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mitaka saw him walk in here with Ren, which has hardly the most subtle of implications.

“She is um, adamant,” Mitaka says, with a evident note of suffering. “Very adamant.”

Hux looks back at the indolent form of Ren in the mod leather armchair, feeling a quirk of dissatisfaction at the corner of his own mouth. Ren had shown up without warning, wearing some new, wickedly tight shirt he’d probably just bought today, and Hux would really, really like to go home with him.

Ren shrugs at the unspoken question, heaving a sigh and kicking a leg up on the glass coffee table, spreading his legs with a rather cruel lack of subtly; he’s wearing the tight jeans, faded in all the worst places.

“Five minutes,” Hux mutters, scowling at the phone as he hangs up.

The door swings open only a few seconds later as Petra sweeps into the office, knit sweater blustering behind her. Her normally placid expression is in such a snarl of resentment that Hux has to wonder if she’s heard that awful rumor he has cams and mics in all the offices. 

“Be quick, Ms Dianovna,” Hux says, exhaling slowly and folding his hands over his desk; it feels strangely odd acting an _actual_ superior with Ren sitting just two meters away. He should probably start filing away retorts to upcoming mocking right now.

“I just - I couldn’t just stand here and ignore it,” Petra declares, straightening to the highest point of her diminutive stature, lifting her chin and consequently forced to reset her glasses when they fall back against her face. She sets her fisted hands on her hips, mouth trembling just so, “I can't work for a man who would commit adultery so blatantly – the office has literal glass walls, Mr Hux!”

“Adultery?” Ren repeats faintly, straightening in his seat to better stare up at Petra, utterly and horrifyingly rapt.

“Who _exactly_ am I committing with?” Hux demands in a mildly embarrassing rush, forcing himself to look away from what seems to be honest pain on Ren’s face. It’s something of a first to be accused like this, to have Ren look like _that_ , and both he would soon like to forget.

“With him, obviously!” Petra announces, pointing down at Ren with a single neon green nail.

“With him,” Hux repeats, raising a brow and turning his head slowly back to Ren. “With _you_. See, Ren, don't overreact.”

Ren is snarling back in an instant. “Don't fucking tell me when I'm overreacting.”

“Those big eyes were practically tearing up,” Hux says, leaning back in his chair and spreading his hands. “I could see it from here.”

Ren scoffs under his breath, rolling his shoulders backward with a punctuating sneer. “Your sight’s just starting to go, _Mr_ Hux.”

“Seriously, do you need a tissue?” Hux asks, spinning his chair slightly to gesture at the small, modestly concealed box, as well as hide the smirk growing on his face. “Or maybe a pacifier would suit you better.”

“Mr Hux!” Petra exclaims, interrupting the back and forth with an emergent note of disbelief in her voice. “I'm surprised you'd do this to your wife at all, let alone so unapologetically _.”_

Hux rolls his eyes to the still-fuming applications programmer, setting his mouth into a disbelieving frown. “Ms Dianovna, why would you _ever_ assume I’d be married to some woman in the first place?”

Ren hums low, eager as ever to argue. “You might.”

“ _You_ might,” Hux counters, momentarily glancing to Ren with a glare before returning to scolding Petra for interrupting what may have been gearing up to the first good night in weeks. “Either way, I’m definitely not, nor do I appreciate you barging in here after hours on such unfounded pretenses.”

“What?” Petra says, her temper winding down as she catches the confusion going around. She is silent for a moment, her brow furrowing, "But your assistant said – “

“My assistant, really?” Hux interrupts, then promptly reaches forward to press on the comm, easily steeling his voice with irritation. “Mitaka, in here. _Now_.”

The speaker is silent for a moment, then a meek voice finally answers, “Yes, sir.”

“I noticed you wearing a ring, so I asked,” Petra says, glancing to Ren for an awkward moment and turning curling her lips over her teeth in clear discomfort. “Doph just said she was a little intimidating? But he definitely said _she_. And that you’ve been together since college, which… Well, I guess wouldn’t be that long ago.”

Hux watches from the corner of his eye as Ren slowly slumps further into his seat, glancing markedly away from Hux and toward the wide glass wall of the window.

Very suspicious.

Petra takes a half-step forward and earnestly widens her eyes, like she still believes somehow she can convince Hux of his own circumstances. “And it's not like she's not trying... He said she brings you food all the time, too!”

“ _She_ brings me food?” Hux repeats, incredulous, yet at the same time feeling as if some question has finally been answered. Granted, slotting into it’s place is how Mitaka has so much time to gossip.

The door swings open, a soft brush of air against the hardwood. “Yes, sir?”

Hux inhales hard through his nose, narrowing his eyes and looking passed Petra to Mitaka, who is now standing just inside the door jamb, hovering in place like he’s ready to take off if need be. “Mitaka, why would you tell Petra I had a _wife_?”

Mitaka glances immediately to Ren, back to Hux, then quickly turns attention to the floor with a curl of nervousness around his mouth. He takes a breath, then speaks quietly on the exhale, "I was kind of told to, sir.”

The downright livid look Ren sends over his shoulder is evidence enough of by _who._

Hux presses his hands to the top of the desk and stands, the move satisfyingly drawing all eyes as he walks slowly over to Ren, looming and glaring back when Ren raises his brows in something like panic. Hux would never actually punish him for something like this, with clearly little to no goal for it in mind from either end, but the sadistic part of him still enjoys the little flinch he earns when pulling the thin, dark chain from under Ren’s collar.

The ring dangling on it slides to the far end, where it glints dully against the sheen of what might actually be sweat breaking out on Ren’s neck. “Satisfied, Ms Dianovna?”

Petra’s eyes go wide, darting between Hux’s hand and Ren’s neck with visible mortification. "Oh no."

Hux looks back down, gently dragging his fingers further along the chain before letting the whole kit drop back to Ren’s chest, just over a straining button. “Alright, both of you out.”

Mitaka is following orders almost before the words have finished echoing, likely to flee the building completely within the next few minutes. It won’t spare him a few choice words tomorrow about from who he’s supposed to take direction - no matter what's on paper, Ren is not meant to have such control over administration .

"Mr Hux, I-I didn’t…” Petra stutters, clearly lingering in attempt to apologize. She's probably worried about her job, but it's not as if she came to this conclusion on her own – apparently, there was _collusion_.

“Out,” Hux barks, not bothering to look up until he hears the last pair of unwelcome feet rush out of his office. He waits until the door quietly closes with a clink of metal and glass, then tips his head to the side, exhaling slowly, “Why would you do that?”

Ren visibly swallows, his previously open posture now fully closed, legs curled together, arms crossed over his chest. His eyes are even focused downward at the table, “I only told Mitaka to – “

“To tell people that you don't _exist_?” Hux interrupts, leaning forward and setting his hand on the back of the chair just over Ren’s shoulder, gripping hard into the leather and wood. “To lie to me? I've been paranoid wondering how he knew my regular orders so quickly.”

Ren glances up under his lashes, awkwardly managing to run a hand through his hair while still keeping palpable space between the two of them. An affected huff comes the back of his throat, “I didn’t tell Mitaka to tell people you were _married_ , just… I think I said something like to say the opposite of me being here. Around the company. Around you.”

“Since when?” Hux snaps, trying to calm himself amid a tetchy swirl of discontent rifling out points of alarm from the corners of his mind.

What happened to the possessive, showy asshole of barely a year ago? Practically gluing a ring on Hux’s finger one day and punching handsy drunkards the next; Ren hadn't been a man capable of keeping anything under his cap, let alone in his closet.

“Not now,” Ren says, contradictory, shifting in the chair and flinching when his shoulder brushes up against Hux’s thumb. “When – _if_  something happens, the people you’re trying to work with… They all want to look good for my family. It could blackball you.”

“What's going to _happen_ , Ren?” Hux asks, though he’s certain enough that he doesn’t want to hear the answer. It couldn’t be more obvious what it means, already acting out to the point of being unassociated, but he has to know if it’s something just…

The past three months, moving everything from a garage office to an actual office, hiring more people, becoming less an inventor and more an overseer… It’s been remarkably stressing to all aspects of life, but there had to be something said for the way it made seeing Ren just walking around here seem ten times better than it’s ever been. Not anything good, perhaps, with the realization it might be because this is the closest physically that they've been in over a week.

Suddenly, despite the anxious feeling trying to crawl around his throat and choke, there's a baser part of Hux rashly insisting he patch the issue by dropping to his knees. It may even work for a little while, deferring this all by a day or longer, enough time for him to think.

“Nothing, I don't know,” Ren mutters, his eyes lowering somewhere around Hux’s neck and expression all around unconvincing.

Hux exhales slowly, feeling his jaw tense to the point of aching teeth.

"Fuck, it's just…” Ren pauses, lifting his hands and pressing them to his forehead, sinking further into the squeaky, still-new leather chair. His voice becomes throatier, descending into something that might preface the destruction of something very, very expensive if Hux isn’t careful. “It's goddamned quiet all the time, now. I feel like I'm going crazy – crazier. And not even a _week_ into this new office you didn't come home, and I know you were working, but… I _know_ you're working, I do, only I can’t help thinking it was because you didn't want to come home. So you kept working. You keep working.”

Hux stares blankly for a few moments, trying to wrap his head around the downright redundant nature of that little spiel and still arriving on bewildered, then… unexpectedly guilty. It hadn’t even occurred to him to think about how this transition might be for Ren, alone now for hours in a silent, empty house isolated at the far end of a gated property. He'd never been as fond of solitude as Hux, he just tried to be – thinking it made him some sort of proper adult.

Hux moves forward with a heavy sigh, tentatively shifting his hand from the seat to around one of Ren’s hunched shoulders, then dropping precariously onto the spare edges of the chair cushion until he's straddling tense thighs. Ren shoves in at the next instant, hair soft and unkempt under Hux’s chin; his entire body is like a taut wire, fingers dug into ribs as if he hasn't seen Hux in months rather than just yesterday.

“It keeps happening more and more - I know it isn't actually a big deal, but last week it was three times you…” Ren takes a shallow breath, his words becoming strangled and tight with the onset of physical consequences to all this emotion. “It’s fucking stupid; I didn’t think I was such a clingy bastard.”

Hux nearly scoffs aloud, a certain accusation of how ‘clingy’ Ren has been from the very beginning on the tip of his tongue, only to suddenly _remember_ the very beginning, along with the fact Ran hadn't actually come up to the office – Hux had found him downstairs in line at the building Kaladi’s. Mitaka had suffered some sort of emergency, and… oh good lord, the little bastard is a lot more manipulative than Hux took him for, using coffee against him.

“Have you been showing up at odd hours this whole time hope I’d just run _into_ you?” Hux demands, leaning back for a better look, yet still caging Ren in with elbows flat over both his shoulders, awkwardly settling down close so they're face to face. “Like we’re back at university?”

Ren glances up and then back down, dragging his teeth over his lower lip in a manner that is undeniably furtive. He grimaces in the next moment, brow furrowing and screwing his eyes shut – the reaction is almost identical to two years ago. “ _No_.”

“Ren, if you scare the people around me into never mentioning you were here, into lying to about it,” Hux says, trying not to sound patronizing, but it's always a little too easy when Ren gets like this, “Then I will never know you’re here. It’s _completely_ different – I almost never leave this office.”

Ren peeks open his eyes, gaze narrow by consequence, “Why?”

“Because I don’t,” Hux says, feeling abruptly defensive, despite the fact it should be Ren on the back foot, and hoping he doesn’t actually _look_ sullen. “I have too much to do.”

Silence settles oddly over the office in the next few moments, and Hux draws his teeth tightly over his lip when that certain expression comes over Ren's face; the one like he's personally rifling through Hux's mind for answers. 

“Oh shit,” Ren mutters eventually, his voice breathy with epiphany, pitching with something else that might be relief. “You really can’t handle that First Order isn’t you anymore.”

Hux rolls his eyes, tilting his head up in habit when Ren ducks forward again, wide lips soon pressing at his neck with some sort of smile palpable at the edges. The tension slowly bleeds out of his own shoulders, as well, and he brings up a hand to curl at the back of Ren’s neck when a low, familiar heat bursts under his skin. He's doubly baffled as to what's going through Ren's mind now, knowing only that it seems no longer to be teetering wildly toward catastrophe. 

“You've been sitting in this room for the last few months trying to micromanage every little action of this place, haven't you?” Ren asks, though it's mostly rhetorical by the way he huffs out a laugh against Hux’s collarbone, “Fuck, my psychiatrist was right – your neuroticism is the biggest threat to our relationship.”

“Shut up,” Hux snaps, teetering forward on his knees until he falls bodily into Ren, chest to chest, one hand awkward over that bratty mouth and his own lips pressed under an ear. “You have lost speaking privileges.”

Ren grumbles something into Hux’s palm, but he doesn't actually make any moves to shove him off. In fact, it only seems to make him laugh more – chest heaving in uneven breaths, eyes curling up at the corners as he narrows them with a mocking look. He really does appear some sort of goon when he gets like this, on the edge of smugness; how he managed to loiter around the office without getting the police called will doubtlessly remain a mystery. 

Hux pointedly closes his eyes as if truly disappointed, and in the next moment finds himself unable to resist an urge to draw his nose down along the soft, warm skin of Ren’s neck. He's not wearing cologne to go with his fancy getup, but another scent is just as prevalent – the rather inexplicably appealing trace of ozone from a day of manipulating metal. He realizes suddenly how long it's been since he’s sat at his unofficial place in the shop, pretending to work but actually watching all this muscle flex under dangerously-thin shirts.

The overpriced smart glass of his office walls has suddenly paid for itself, frosted as it is 90% of the time, because there is no way Hux can wait until they're anywhere close to home. He's already half-hard in his trousers just from that familiar smell, and even the rational part of his brain is losing to the licking sparks of want crawling up his body. Ren definitely knew before the row what he was doing coming here dressed like that, as much as he was passively lingering, and the look he had in his eye when he first sat down across Hux’s desk is a distant, but hardly forgotten memory.

“Agreed then, nothing is going to happen,” Hux says, straightening up and sliding his hand slowly through Ren’s hair, gently twisting strands between his fingers, then abruptly forcing Ren’s head back to expose his neck. He loosens his other hand from Ren's mouth and drags it down around his throat, just along the uneven line of his jaw to press fingers hard into bone - it's indulgent, but he couldn't give less of a shit right now. He presses a soft kiss to Ren's parted lips in the wake of  _another_ indulgent idea, “ _Except,_  I think, you fucking me in this obnoxious chair you picked out, every inch of your oversized cock captured on state-of-the-art security, giving me something to pay attention to tomorrow while a crusty investor tries to wheedle out another piece of our company.”

Ren chokes on nothing, but enough like a laugh that it's more than answer.

“Or up against the windows, so I can stare out across this entire bloody city,” Hux continues, bending to scrape his teeth hard against a straining tendon, then flattening his tongue against the mark on the way back up.

“Okay,” Ren chokes, swallowing thick under the treatment and hands sliding down around Hux’s thighs, gripping just under his ass. “Cool.”

Hux rolls his eyes, leaning back and feeling slightly put out at the tame response. “Cool? All you have to say is ‘cool’?”

Ren is quiet for a long moment, then glances down through his lashes. “Yeah. Cool.”

“How fickle,” Hux says, drawing a hand further up to give Ren a light shake by the chin. “I was under the impression you were near heartbreak at my ignoring you? I want tears of gratitude.”

Ren only turns his head, his lips catching at Hux’s palm for a short moment. “You’re doing the supervillain voice.”

Hux growls under his breath, releasing Ren's hair to instead pinch hard at thin skin over his ribs, through this shirt that is _definitely_ a size too small. “I _do not_ have a voice, you brat.”

“A really, really gay supervillain,” Ren amends, with a huff catching in his throat, voice lilting into an utterly shameful, pitchy impression of Hux’s accent, “ _Married to some **woman**_!?’”

~

Mitaka glances backward with a start at an odd, low noise bleeding through from Hux’s office. He hastily clears his throat in the next instant, looking across the hall to the visitors bench and speaking a touch too loud. “Hey, Petra? How did you even know Mr Organa was here?”

“Oh, I – _Organa_ ,” Petra squeaks, looking up from her phone, voice pitching with a new sort of panic. “Like the senator?”

“I-I uh, I doubt it…” Mitaka says, feeling his face warm with the mild shame of the fib; he knows he’s a terrible liar, but everyone always seems to _believe_ him? He could never have guessed before tonight that Petra actually took what he said, in little more than panic, for truth. “How did you know, though?”

“Downstairs,” Petra says, reaching up and pulling nervously at a piece of loose hair near her neck, mouth falling into a troubled grimace. “I was getting coffee and I saw him grab Hux’s ass – I thought he was going to get hit, but…”

“But?” Mitaka prompts, raising his brows.

“Hux just turned and gave him this look,” Petra says, her voice going quiet to the point of almost inaudible. “A very… _indecent_ look. Sort of mad, but also really not."

“Oh,” Mitaka intones, resisting an urge to glance backward again with a grimace. Petra’s observation is just proof of what he’d already dreaded happening even before he’d faked a printer failure to get Hux downstairs. “Sorry about lying to you. I couldn’t –"

“It’s okay,” Petra interrupts, standing up from the bench and giving a self-deprecating sigh, shrugging through visible tension in her shoulders. “I really shouldn’t have just barged in like that without actually checking online.”

“Yeah, probably,” Mitaka says quietly, pressing his mouth into an awkward line. He’s done his own digging and not found _a lot_ on Ben Organa, aside from the fact he very generously ‘donated’ $5.2MIL to Hux when First Order was just a start-up with a single prototype. More personally, he's suffered calls four times a day, physical appearances at least three times a week, and been threatened bodily harm multiple times if so much as a _word_ was breathed in Hux's direction.

Admittedly, Ben does have a habit of twisting paperclips into little animals on his visits, which Mitaka keeps next to his monitor and complains to, so that’s been okay.  

“I’ve just had so much caffeine trying to keep up; I think it’s making me nuts,” Petra says, gesturing in front of her with a pair of curling hands, as if still holding a to-go cup between them. “Working here is so scary. I heard this rumor that Hux is always watching us on like _cameras_ for productivity setbacks – isn’t that crazy?”

Mitaka laughs woodenly, pushing the noise out of his chest, “Yeah.”

Petra gives her own self-deprecating huff, dropping her hands and twisting her mouth into a frown. “Probably won’t like finding me out here when he leaves, will he?”

“No,” Mitaka agrees, exhaling with relief, grabbing his phone and standing from his desk. “I’ll follow you out.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you've ever seen the IT Crowd, you might want to imagine that Mitaka goes through a similar panic as Moss when he lies. ~~I also may have seen that Monty Hall B99 scene 100x on my dash in like the last week for some reason~~
> 
> Every single fic I write is a goddamned misunderstanding fic - I have a problem. Also, I completely if this was something anyone clicks and then immediately backs out of, it barely holds together within the 'verse.
> 
> Also, since everyone else is doing it, tumblr: [Ezlebe](http://ezlebe.tumblr.com).


End file.
